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APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 



APOLLONIUS OF 
TYANA 

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES 



BY 

F. W. GROVES CAMPBELL, LL.D. (Dubl.) 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

ERNEST OLDMEADOW 




NEW YORK 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 



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PRINTED BY 

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. 

PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND 

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CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Preface . ... 7 

I. Apollonius of Tyana . . 26 

II. The Birth and Youth of 

Apollonius . . 31 

HI. The Contemplative Life . . 41 

IV. The Active Life . 62 

V. Apollonius Travels to India . 71 

VI. He Visits Asia Minor and Greece 82 

VII. He Visits Rome and Egypt . 93 

VIII. His Further Travels and Return 

to Rome for Trial . . 107 

IX. Conclusion . . . 113 



PREFACE 

]^TINE and ninety years have passed since 
Edward Berwick, vicar of Leixlip in 
County Kildare, published the first and only 
complete English version of the Life of 
zApollonius of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus, 
the rhetorician and sophist of Lemnos. 
Berwick's volume has become so rare that, 
last autumn, two London book-dealers of 
world-wide reputation searched and adver- 
tised for a copy in vain. Yet the nineteenth 
century produced a plentiful crop of essays 
and commentaries on the gospel of Apol- 
lonius according to Philostratus. Baur, 
Zeller, Cardinal Newman, J. A. Froude, 
Chassang — these are well-known names, but 
they do not exhaust the list of scholars 
and critics who, since Berwick's days, 
have responded to the allurements of 

7 



8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Tyana's saint and sage. Nor has the 
spell fallen upon scholars and critics 
alone. Thousands of readers of Keats' 
Lamia have lingered curiously over the 
foot-note, drawn from The Anatomy of Melan- 
choly ^ in which Burton quotes Philostratus' 
account of the young philosopher whom 
Apollonius miraculously delivered from a 
lamia, or serpent, in the guise of a beautiful 
young gentlewoman. There are others who 
profess to breathe again the atmosphere of 
the iEsculapian College at iEgae in Pater's 
Marius the Epicurean. Swedenborgians have 
found in Apollonius a Swedenborg born out 
of due time : and some so-called Theoso- 
phists,on the strength of the sage's pilgrimage 
to the wise men of India, have claimed him 
for their very own. Yet his full legend in 
English is no longer to be bought for money. 
There was, however, a day when the 
names of Philostratus and of Apollonius of 
Tyana were on every lettered Briton's 
tongue. Towards the end of the seven- 
teenth century there appeared in London a 



PREFACE 9 

translation, by Charles Blount, of the first 
two books of Philostratus' Life. Blount's 
notes (which, according to some, he bor- 
rowed from a more eminent scholar) poured 
oil upon the already fierce fires of the 
Deistical controversy. Bossuet had de- 
scribed Apollonius as a magician in league 
with the devil ; but the effect of Blount's 
artfully annotated pages was to pit Tyana's 
glory against Nazareth's. Great was the 
consternation of the orthodox at the news 
that thankful Tyana, like ungrateful Naza- 
reth, had nursed a prophet of blameless life, 
of miraculous power, of superabundant lov- 
ing-kindness, and of heroic virtue. Both 
Apollonius of Tyana and Jesus of Nazareth 
were born in the same lustrum, if not in the 
same year ;* both Tyana's babe and Bethle- 

1 The birth of Apollonius is assigned to the year b.c. 
4. But, as everybody knows, the current computation of 
the beginning of the Christian era is incorrect, and the 
first year of our Lord ought to be dated four or five years 
earlier. If the Apollonian and Christian nativities both 
belong to the same year the coincidence is entitled to more 
attention than it has received. 



io APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

hem's were said to have sprung from a 
divine Father and a human mother ; and 
both these holy ones drew their first breaths 
amid gracious portents and supernatural 
singings. Nor were these the only paral- 
lels in the memoirs of the Tyanean and the 
Nazarene. Blount's publication was there- 
fore received with horror as an attempt to 
displace the religion of the Incarnation. In 
answer to the question, " Is this He that 
should come, or look we for another ? " 
orthodox Christians had been accustomed 
to affirm boldly the uniqueness, sufficiency, 
and finality of Mary's Son : but, like a bolt 
from the blue, here was Philostratus oppos- 
ing himself to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John and offering an alternative Messiah. 
Matthew Arnold was anticipated ; and the 
Greek ideal was pitted against the Hebrew. 
Fierce passions were let loose. Sermons, 
pamphlets, and volumes descended upon the 
presumptuous Blount like fireballs and hail- 
stones ; and his adversaries did not rest 
until the authorities had forbidden him to 



PREFACE II 

print the remaining six books of his transla- 
tion. 1 

That Philostratus composed his Life of 
Apollonius of Tyana as a pagan counterblast 
to the Christian Gospels is an opinion 
which has been held by reputable scholars 
both before and after Blount's day. Philo- 
stratus wrote the Life about a.d. 216 ; and, 
in 305, Hierocles, who had been pro- 
consul of Palmyra, of Bithynia, and finally 
of Alexandria, published a critical examina- 
tion of Christianity in which he opposed 
the Apollonian to the Christian miracles. 
This work of Hierocles is lost, and we 
know it mainly from the able rejoinder 
of Eusebius. 2 Hierocles was further 

1 Blount repays the student more as a human being than 
as a scholar. His tomes are the graves of lost causes. 
He gave deep offence in arguing that King William held 
the throne by right of conquest — an argument according 
to which any stronger invader would have had the right to 
turn King William out. In 1698 he committed suicide 
because he could not marry his deceased wife's sister, 
with whom he had fallen violently in love. 

2 The reply of Eusebius to Hierocles was printed 
as an appendix to the text of Philostratus' Life, which 



12 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

answered by Lactantius ; and it soon be- 
came as necessary for every Catholic saint 
or doctor of the fourth and fifth centuries 
to have an opinion about Apollonius of 
Tyana as it was for the French bishops 
of fifty years ago to have an opinion about 
Our Lady of La Salette. Eusebius hand- 
somely recognised Apollonius as the first of 
philosophers. Lactantius and Arnobius 
did not deny his miracles, but referred 
them to magic. 1 St. Jerome also regarded 

Aldus, with some trepidation, published in 1 50 1 . Aldus ex- 
plained that he was giving " the antidote with the poison." 
1 The miracles of Apollonius are further ascribed to 
magic in the twenty-fourth of the Quaes tiones et Respon- 
stones ad Orthodoxos^ a work formerly attributed to Justin 
Martyr. As the passage appears to have been written by 
an unknown author after the death of Philostratus, it is 
hardly worth reproducing here : but, lest any reader 
should be puzzled at hearing that Christian fathers 
admitted any non-Christian miracles as historical, it may 
be well to explain that many early Christians did not 
look upon the gods and goddesses of paganism as mere 
fictions. They vaguely imagined Jupiter and Juno and 
the rest as supernal personages who, having been dethroned 
and enfeebled by the Blessed Trinity, went on living 
stealthily like kings and queens in exile. Wagner's Tann- 
kauser, with the pious Minnesingers on the top of the hill 
and Venus in her grotto below, illustrates this state of mind. 



PREFACE 13 

him as a magician ; but he found things in 
his life to praise. St. Augustine, in arguing 
with the heathen, paid Apollonius a rather 
mild compliment by allowing that he was 
purer than Jove. The learned Bishop 
Sidonius Apollinaris praised the Tyanean 
and translated his Life into Latin. On the 
other hand, St. John Chrysostom branded 
the Life as false and Apollonius as a de- 
ceiver ; and St. John Chrysostom's gradually 
became the common view. In the ninth 
century Photius of Constantinople roundly 
denounced Philostratus' eight books as a 
tissue of lies. Nevertheless the cult of 
Apollonius lingered on almost to the end of 
the Middle Ages, as appears from the state- 
ment of Nicetas concerning the melting- 
down of certain bronze doors at Byzantium. 
These inestimable doors are said to have 
been inscribed with extracts from the Book 
of Rites, a lost work of Apollonius ; and 
they were destroyed so as to put an end to 
non-Christian beliefs and usages which had 
gathered round them. Of the Renaissance 



14 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

writers who paid attention to Apollonius, 
the most remarkable was naturally the 
magic-loving and inquisitive Pico della 
Mirandola who, like Baronius, opined that 
the wonder-worker had made a pact with 
Satan. Meric Casaubon, in his relation of 
John Dee's dealings with spirits, asserted 
that the spirits with whom he had com- 
merce, not Satan, gave Apollonius his 
power : but this has not settled the matter. 
Passing over Blount, with his friends and 
foes, both English and French, and coming to 
modern times, we find some writers following 
Voltaire, and placing the miracles of both 
Apollonius and Jesus in the same category, 
while others went on maintaining that in so 
far as Apollonius was not a myth he was 
an impostor. Broadly speaking, the par- 
tisans on both sides were equally uncritical, 
and they simply allowed their prepossessions 
for or against Christianity to determine their 
attitude to Christianity's supposed rival. 

In the middle of the nineteenth century 
the most prevalent theory concerning the 



PREFACE 15 

work of Philostratus was Baur's. Baur, 
followed by Zeller, held that the Life was 
a " tendency-writing. ,, The old opinion 
that Philostratus had deliberately sought to 
rival the Christian Gospels was adopted 
by Cardinal Newman in one of the least 
satisfactory of his writings ; and it was 
much more fully set forth by T. W. 
Allies in his Foundations of Christendom. 
Later on, poor Apollonius fell among the 
essayists and was adjudged a blackguard 
and an impostor by J. A. Froude. At the 
present day, the casual student is confronted 
by a rich embarrassment of hypotheses. He 
may believe, with Dr. Campbell, that Philo- 
stratus has merely embellished and amplified 
a partially truthful tradition ; or, with 
Chassang, 1 that the Life is a romanesque in 
which, behind all the fond inventions, there 
wanders the solid reality of a most original 
peripatetic philosopher — un Dion Chrysostome 

1 A. Chassang, Apollonius de Tyane, sa Fie, ses Foy- 
ages, ses Prodiges, par P kilos tr ate, etc. Paris, 1862. This 
is one of the most notable works on the subject. 



1 6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

double de Plotin ou de Porphyre ; or, with 

Professor MahafFy, who dissents from Baur 

and Zeller, that we have to do with a mere 

fairy tale, composed for the purpose of 

painting an ideal sage, or a religious 

counterpart to the fabulous history of 

Alexander the Great ; or, with Eunape, 

that Apollonius was something midway 

between the gods and men ; or, with 

Ammianus Marcellinus,that, like Pythagoras 

and Socrates, he was a privileged mortal who 

lived assisted by a familiar genius ; or, with 

the abbe Freppel, that he was "a Don 

Quixote of philosophy," Damis being his 

Sancho Panza. 

Meanwhile good progress has been made 

in the dispassionate criticism, on modern 

principles, of the text and its sources. The 

text of Kayser (who, by the way, regards 

the contents of the Life as fabulous) is the 

best. 1 As for the sources, the most indus- 

1 Third Edition. Leipzig, 1870. This third edition 
embodies the improvements of Westermann and of the 
Italian brothers Piccolo. Kayser's Preface describes the 
extant MSS. 



PREFACE 17 

trious and sharp-eyed sifting of them so far 
has been done by Jessen j 1 but there is room 
for an industrious philologist with enough 
sense of style to enable him to discrimi- 
nate between Philostratus' own diction 
and any older memorabilia of Apollonius 
which may be preserved verbatim in the 
Life. 

From what has been said, it will be 
apparent that the question of Apollonius is 
almost wholly bound up with the question 
of Philostratus. Outside the writings of 
Philostratus, and the works to which they 
have given rise, very few allusions to Apol- 
lonius are to be found. It is true that 
Appuleius spoke of him with respect, and 
that Lucian, also writing in the second 
century, spurned him as an impostor ; and 
we have the assurance of Lampridius that the 

1 J. Jessen, Apollonius von Tyana und sein Biograph 
Philostratus. Hamburg, 1885. The British Museum 
librarians have bound up the national copy of this work 
along with a penny dreadful entitled The Life of Dick 
Turpin, Prince of Highwaymen. 
B 



1 8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Emperor Alexander Severus placed in his 
private chapel a statue of Apollonius along 
with statues of Christ, Abraham, and 
Orpheus. It seems also true that Marcus 
Aurelius vowed a temple in his honour, 
and that Hadrian, with reverent pomp, 
deposited his writings in the splendid 
palace at Antium, whither pilgrims flocked 
daily in crowds to see them. But one 
may fairly say that, without Philostratus, 
Apollonius had survived merely as a shadow 
of a shade. The credibility of Philo- 
stratus is, therefore, a prime considera- 
tion. 1 

It was the Empress Domna Julia who set 
Philostratus to work. This remarkable 
woman, who deserves fuller recognition, 

1 Vopiscus, whose literary activity was seventy years 
later than that of Philostratus, intended to write a life of 
Apollonius (whom he regarded as more than a man), but 
did not persevere. Tascius Victorianus, Nichomachus, 
and the Egyptian epic-poet Soterichus are said to have 
composed lives of the Tyanean ; but no traces of these 
works remain. A reference in Dion Crassus is con- 
temporary with Philostratus. 



PREFACE 19 

was the daughter of Bassianus, priest of 
the Sun at Emesa in Syria. Surrounded by 
artists and men of letters, she dispensed 
enlightened patronage to thought and learn- 
ing. 1 Paganism was making its last rally 
against the new religion to which Constan- 
tine, only ten years later, was destined to 
surrender. Gibbon does not admit that the 
Life of Apollonius of Tyana was intended as a 
pagan stroke of offensive-defence, and those 
who agree with him are entitled to their 
opinion : but it is hard to believe that 
Philostratus began his task without any 
recollection of the Christian evangels. He 
confesses that he had " embellished " the 
materials out of which he pretended to have 
built his work. These materials (excluding 
four books on Apollonius by Maeraganes, 2 
which Philostratus describes as untrust- 
worthy) are said to have been the book of 

1 Like Blount, another sponsor of Apollonius, Domna 
Julia committed suicide. 

2 There is a passing mention of Maeraganes* books 
in Origen, Contra Ce/sum. 



20 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Maximus of iEgae, 1 where Apollonius spent 
his early manhood, at the College of iEscu- 
lapius, and a much more important account 
of Apollonius' travels from the pen of his 
disciple Damis. 

If it be granted for the moment that 
Damis and Maximus truly lived and 
breathed, and that their manuscripts lay at 
the elbow of Philostratus as he wrote, it 
will still be evident that those who would 
set up an historical Apollonius against the 
historical Jesus are at a disadvantage. 
Whatever may be believed as to a sup- 
posed primitive Christian gospel, no open- 
minded scholar can deny that the writings 
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in 
much the same form as we know them to- 
day, were extant in the first century of the 
Christian era : but, in the case of Apol- 

1 Those who do not prefer to regard Apollonius of 
Tyana as a rival to Jesus of Nazareth will be glad to 
learn that the college at JEgx eventually became 
Christian, and that the poor-sick were treated there 
without money and without price. 



PREFACE 21 

lonius, we have, at the best, an avowedly 
embellished third-century redaction of con- 
temporary records which have perished. It 
is exactly as though our earliest Life of Jesus 
of Nazareth should have been composed in 
the same year as the Nicene Creed. Worse 
still, there is no external evidence of the 
existence of Damis and Maximus and their 
writings ; and the internal evidence, if any, 
stands suspect for the curious reason about 
to be given. 

One of the few extant works of Philo- 
stratus is his Imagines^ which claims to be a 
sort of catalogue raisonne to four and sixty 
pictures in a villa at Naples. 1 The book is 
highly interesting as the earliest continuous 
effort in art-criticism which has come down 
to us : but, on grounds which cannot be 
stated here, many students of Philostratus 
have concluded that there was no such villa 
and no such gallery of pictures. If this 
conclusion be sound Philostratus was not 
only the first art-critic, but also the first of 
1 There are French translations of the Imagines. 



22 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

those demure men of letters whose delight 
is to play solemn hoaxes in which a list of 
sham sources and authorities ushers in a 
show of mock erudition and a pretence of 
critical processes. In other words, if there 
were no pictures at Naples there may have 
been no Damis taking notes in the wake of 
the shadowy Apollonius, and no Maximus 
ransacking his memory in the College of 
iEsculapius ; in which case the Apollonius 
of Philostratus becomes an ingenious ex- 
ample of literary confectionery, something 
like the ox of barley and honey, sacrificed 
by the Pythagorean Empedocles of Agri- 
gentum, which Philostratus mentions in 
the first chapter of the Life} It is fair to 
add that the Imagines might never have 
been impugned if a belief in the fabulous 
character of the Life had not first established 

1 The Life is one of the 269 books reviewed by 
Photius of Constantinople in his precious Bibliotheca. 
While denouncing the matter of the work as unedifying 
fiction, Photius handsomely acknowledges its literary 
charm. 



PREFACE 23 

itself in its readers' heads : but the doubt 
exists, with its proper arguments, and goes 
to complicate one of the most alluring of 
literary puzzles. That Philostratus was a 
fanciful writer, hungry for the marvellous 
and prone to fine writing, further appears 
from his Eroica. Indeed, Chassang calls 
the Eroica the key to the problem. 

So much by way of introduction to the 
case of Apollonius in general. And now 
the reader will perhaps bear with a justifi- 
cation of this little book in particular. As 
Blount's translation is only an obsolete frag- 
ment, and as Berwick's almost inaccessible 
version contains a superabundance of mis- 
renderings and lacks all the flavour of the 
original, Dr. Campbell and I are wishful, either 
by our own efforts or by stirring up some- 
body better fitted for the task, to fill a gap 
in English libraries with a more satisfactory 
translation. Further, as the one problem 
involves the other, we have in mind a trans- 
lation of the Imagines (a book which has 



24 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

never been turned into English), accom- 
panied by reproductions of such Pompeian 
and other wall-paintings as may throw light 
upon the text. But life is short ; and, as 
every one knows who has made the experi- 
ment, Philostratus is a troublesome author 
to translate. We are, therefore, sending up 
a ballon d'essai in the form of the present 
volume, which is addressed to general 
readers rather than to scholars who can 
peruse Philostratus in his own Greek. 
Should we find a sufficiently large public 
interested in Apollonius and his biographer 
we shall be encouraged to carry out our 
plan. 

In the following pages Dr. Campbell has 
sought to recover Apollonius of Tyana from 
the dust of controversy and to picture him 
as he existed in the minds of his more rev- 
erent and spiritually minded believers. 
How far such an Apollonius is identical 
with the mage who was certainly born in 
Tyana, or how far he is a literary fiction, or 
how far he is an ideal saint sublimated from 



PREFACE 25 

the rarest aspirations of the finer spirits 
in that pagan society which Christianity 
had begun to leaven — these are polemics 
from which Dr. Campbell has purposely 
abstained. He has, however, rounded off 
his short study by contrasting some of the 
practices and doctrines of this Cappadocian, 
who is well-nigh forgotten, with some words 
and works of that Galilean who has con- 
quered the world. 

Ernest Oldmeadow. 

July, 1908. 



APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

A STRANGE distinctive figure, clad in 
white linen and not in garments wrought 
of skins ; with feet unsandalled and with locks 
unshorn ; austere, reserved, and of meagre 
mien ; with eyes cast upon the ground as 
was his manner, Apollonius of Tyana drew 
to him, with something of a saint's attrac- 
tion, all simple folk, and yet won as inti- 
mates Emperors of Rome. 

Through his love for all life and his swift 
appreciation of the beauty of the human 
form, he early drew nigh to the sufferings 
of the body and became acquainted with the 
sufferings of the soul. He sought to heal, 
or at least to soothe, some of the distresses, 
physical and spiritual, of poor humanity ; 
and to such a singular degree of skilfulness 

26 



APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 27 

did he attain in the healing arts of his day 
that even the sacred oracles of iEgae and of 
Delphi, pronouncing him more than mortal, 
referred the distempered body and the 
smitten soul to him for relief, knowing 
that from his very presence proceeded a 
peculiar virtue, a benign influence, an 
almost theurgic power. 

By reason also of his devotion to a lofty 
philosophy, he, at an unusually early age, 
elected to be poor when the world laboured 
to be rich ; and he learned to esteem 
temperance when men would consider 
luxury alone. As a youth, he broke away 
from the status of family and city when 
society was tribal and communal, preferring 
— at critical and even at ordinary periods — 
to live alone and to think alone and ulti- 
mately, as it happened, to die alone. 

By years of silence and contemplation, by 
extensive travel, and by a continuous spirit- 
ual and worldly experience he deepened and 
developed, in no minute measure, an origi- 
nally powerful and intense personality ; and 



28 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

so it was that at length he became the 
admiration not only of all countries through 
which he passed, but of the whole wide 
Roman and Hellenic world. Cities sent 
envoys and embassages to him decreeing 
him public favours ; monarchs bestowed 
special dignities upon him, counting him 
worthy to be their counsellor ; incense was 
burnt before his altars ; and after his death 
divine honours were paid to his images, which 
had been erected, with great enthusiasm, in 
all the temples of the gods. Nor did his 
fame evanesce. All down the ages his name 
has carried in it something of a hurricane ; 
for speculative critics of both early and latter 
days have thought to find in the life of this 
exceptional character a parallel to the life of 
Christ, and to ground an argument thereon 
against the supernatural claims of the Son of 
Mary. Hence for centuries even the name 
of Apollonius was odious to Christians, for 
it seemed the very Gospel of the Son of 
God was at stake ; and Christian apologists, 
on their part, in self-defence (such is human 



APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 29 

nature) were not lacking to attack fiercely 
their adversaries' champion and to denounce 
him as little better than an impostor, a 
sorcerer, and a magician. On this account 
they have generally failed to understand the 
man. They have lacked, at least in their 
combative approach to him, that sweet affec- 
tion for signal worth, that gracious patience 
and generous sympathy for nobleness which 
is absolutely necessary to comprehend a new 
or startling character or mode of life. 

Moreover, they have entirely overlooked 
the society and culture from which the man 
took his origin and of which he was a 
product — that mellowing and, even then, 
ancient Greek culture, decadent, no doubt, 
yet still influential, of which at its more 
perfect epoch we in our age can catch but 
some partial ideas from the marvellous 
designs stamped on a Macedon coin, the 
elegant shape of some beautiful Phocian 
brazier or Attic tripod, from the satisfying 
and grand grace-of-line still existing in 
some old Athenian temple, or in passionate 



30 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

drama and profound philosophy — that cult- 
ure, in a word, which has shaped and 
informed the whole world's art. 

So the dust of centuries of controversy 
has obscured this wonderful personality. A 
name which once illuminated with a singular 
splendour the mighty Roman Empire has 
been transmitted to us dimmed, if not alto- 
gether obscured, by uncouth hands ; and 
there comes to us with an increasingly 
regretful surprise the knowledge that we 
can never now quite appraise to its correct 
value the beauty and spirituality of the life 
of one whose heart was with the hearts of 
men and whose mind moved among celestial 
things ; whose native city was accounted, 
for his sake, a sacred city, a city of refuge, a 
privileged city, one that enjoyed the peculiar 
right of electing its own magistrates and 
enacting its own decrees, and whose coins 
were struck, in consequence of her son's 
greatness, with the proud inscription : Tvava 
te/oa, acrvXos, clvtovojulos. 



II 



THE BIRTH AND YOUTH OF 
APOLLONIUS 

TN the dawn of one of those consummate 
summer days which pass so calmly and 
serenely by in Hellenic lands that even a 
rustic Cappadocian might well conceive 
them to be the immense slow-moving 
thoughts of Zeus, Apollonius first breathed 
this old world's air in the same year (accord- 
ing to the latest computations) as the Babe 
of Bethlehem. A wondrous child surely — 
born at early morn, just at the time when, 
doubtless, the finely fashioned feet of the 
Sun -God fevered the mountain tops and 
his purple mantle trailed gloriously through 
the dark vales. For in the imaginative 
appreciation of a later day (the only 

31 



32 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

original appreciation, 1 based on fragmentary 
facts and floating fancies, which has come 
down the centuries to us) it is recorded 
that Apollo was his reputed father and 
that birth was given to him in the flowering 
fields around Tyana. Thither his mother, 
attended by her maidens, had gone forth to 
gather the gentle buds still sealed with dew, 
plucking, so to say, the sweet blossom of 
maternity to the joyous chants of swans, 
sacred birds consecrated to the God of Light, 
which with glad rush of wing and vent of 
voice circled the mead wherein she lay, pre- 
saging, as it would seem, in some sort, the 
perfect purity of the man that was to be. 

The child, of flower-like form and grace, 
seemed as he grew to be endowed with such 
singular bodily health and bright bloom of 
countenance that the hearts of mothers of 
other children, less favoured than he, would 
be ever touched with an envious wistfulness ; 
for there was about him such a pure and 
delightful beauty as, in their eyes, could 
1 Philostratus , Life of ' Apollonius, written about 216 a.d. 



THE BIRTH OF APOLLONIUS 33 

only have been given him by a signal favour 
of the Gods. 

To the natural delight of the growing 
lad in things comely and cheerful about him, 
and to his peculiar esteem for all that was 
externally bright and affluent in nature or 
man, there was allied, at least during his 
formative years, a profound disquiet, an 
almost visible distress, a kind of revulsion 
from excessive sympathy, as indeed it was, 
at faces or forms tinted with the wan hues 
of pain or decay, as at something lacking in 
the fulness of life or the perfection of form 
or natural grace. Meshed in a strangely 
intimate way with his capacity for enjoy- 
ment was a certain faculty for fear or grief. 
The keen joy, for example, which he evinced 
in the fresh vitality of spring or in the full 
strength of summer would be ever chas- 
tened with the anticipation of inevitable 
change, of sunless hours and of darkness. 
The fading of a flower or the inconsolable 
crying of a little child would be, to his boyish 
mind, the shadow, faint perhaps, yet certain, 



34 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

of the deeper and more enduring darkness 
which is Death. 

He had not, of course, as yet attained 
to the estimation of the grandeur and dis- 
tinction of Death, its unique and supreme 
beauty, its natural loveliness when considered 
as part of the economy of Life. But as he 
grew in years it was given him to catch 
something of its sweetness as of the perfume 
of some hidden flower. 

One may perhaps venture to indicate 
certain influences which tended to develop 
in Apollonius, as he advanced into manhood, 
that lofty reverence in which he held all life, 
and deepened, as a consequence, his dislike to 
all that apparently degraded or impaired it ; 
certain sources, as they undoubtedly were, 
from which he drew the inspiration and the 
enthusiasm of his life, which enabled him to 
catch the vision of a deathless destiny and, 
even, at length (Oh happy man !) to make 
his life conformable to his dream. 

First in fundamental importance of these 
three persuasions was that blithe spirit of 



THE BIRTH OF APOLLONIUS 35 

swift and joyful elevation, yet of swift and 
delicate melancholy, which was essentially 
Greek, and which pervaded Greece and the 
Grecian world : not, of course, that supreme 
Hellenism which for a short season, some 
centuries previous, had soared serene and 
grand beyond the range of all vain question- 
ings and unrest, beyond all that would in 
any way limit or diffuse consummate con- 
ception or execution ; but that later spirit of 
aftermost efflorescence or extreme maturity — 
that decadence^ as we would call it — still 
bright and glorious, but suggestive of 
oblique suns in the August month, when 
the inevitable fatigue of the year's glory is 
already in the air, and when the shadow of 
shortening days already steals, like a grief, 
into the face of heaven. Native and not 
alien to this blithe and buoyant spirit and to 
this soft and tender melancholy was the 
genius of Apollonius. For the Greeks were 
really at heart a wistful people, shy in very 
deed of the sorrows of life and timid of the 
terrors of death. They turned ever in- 



36 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

stinctively to the light ; loving the glad 
sunshine and the gleaming smile — for shadow 
and tears had no inherent loveliness that 
they should desire them. Thus they would 
incline from all that would sadden or depress. 
They saw the sombre side of things, but 
they would ever avert their gaze. They 
would be at pains, even, to change a sad tale 
into a sweet myth : a murdered youth they 
would translate into a bright star or a 
beautiful flower ; and the very Erynnides or 
Furies they softened into the Eumenides or 
Merciful Ones. 

But this fundamental and emotional trait 
in the young man's character was powerfully 
acted upon by that new influence which was 
invading the whole Hellenist world, and 
which was displacing, or at least transform- 
ing, the ancient faiths which were exclu- 
sively local, tribal, or civic. The old academic 
systems of Zeno and Epicurus had ceased 
to touch the heart, and the older rational 
systems of Aristotle and Plato were comfort- 
less and cold. Scepticism had clamoured 



THE BIRTH OF APOLLONIUS 37 

awhile for support, but the souls of men 
had shrunk from it. And now from the 
shining East new worships and new faiths 
came streaming in with a sense of sacred, 
almost sacramental, mystery and inspiration i 1 
worships which, beneath all multiplicity, 
made for unity, and which, beneath all 
variety, yearned for God ; attractive wor- 
ships, with rites more magnificent and orgies 
more august than any previously known 
or than that offered by the simple service 
or by the quiet prayer presented to Here 
or Athene ; worships vivified with en- 
thusiasm and inspired with poetry, and 
which, notwithstanding at times gaudy and 
meretricious shows, wild and uncontrolled 
revivals, and mysteries mingled with debas- 
ing extravagances, yet contained the eternal 
truths of vital religion wherein was liberty 
for the soul and a new way for the spirit, 
where the hithertofore prisoned and pur- 
blind being could soar into a loftier and a 

1 Cf. Professor Mahaffy's Greek World under Roman 
Sway (Macmillan), pp. 181-266, to which I am indebted. 



38 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

rarer air, and thence, in ascension, could 
descry afar off the marvellous vision of an 
endless life beyond this earthly day. And 
further, in these new faiths, appeal was made 
not to the confined or local, civil or tribal 
cults — cults that were purely individualist 
and only sundered man from man — but 
to society at large, to all humanity, to 
the whole world, and indicated the unity 
and brotherhood of man and the unity and 
fatherhood of God. Hence when the dulcet 
sound of the sweet clanging cymbals and 
of the soft reeds of the Phrygian Cybele 
warmed the air, or the matinal chant ot 
Mithra and the nocturnal note of Serapis 
stirred it strangely, the flexible and acutely 
syncretic mind of the Greek comprehended 
the new voice and received the new hope ; 
and Apollonius, feeling his spiritual thirst 
assuaged and his yearning stanched, though 
preserving the older aristocratic forms and 
institutions and conservative beliefs, opened 
his heart to what was best in the new faiths 
and accepted them, not merely for the poetical 



THE BIRTH OF APOLLONIUS 39 

and enthusiastic elements which predomin- 
ated, but for the active virtues, the practical 
conduct, which took form in a unitive life, 
at once common, corporate, and continuous. 
Lastly, came an actual experience which 
consolidated and fused the otherwise un- 
fixed and nebulous thoughts of the sensi- 
tive youth : a delightful visit of four years' 
duration to the cool groves and silent 
temple of ^sculapius at JEgae. Hither 
he had come in the hope of wooing or 
winning some of the reluctant and elusive 
secrets of Nature or the God, by means of 
which he would thenceforth be enabled to 
approach with a sympathy that would 
soothe and heal the ageless misery of man 
or uphold for a time his agony that endures. 
Here in this solemn temple, reared in all 
the austere magnificence of Greek concep- 
tion great with Greek restraint, he became 
so devoted to the Master and so earnest in 
his service that it was said the God, in his 
clemency, found peculiar pleasure in per- 
forming many and strange cures in the 



40 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

presence of so faithful a witness as his 
servitor ; and here as one of a great com- 
munity of devout men, bound together by 
a moral discipline, possessing a common 
rule, and, as it might appear to him, enjoy- 
ing a privileged relationship with the God 
that medicined the bodies and souls of sick 
and sorrowful men, he saw and learned in 
actual practice the ordered^ as well as the 
corporate, life. 



Ill 

THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 

TN his daily occupation of restoring the 
disordered body and the disarrayed mind, 
and in his continual contact with the great 
healing phenomena of Nature, problems 
and profound questions, which had in earlier 
years presented themselves incidentally to 
the mind of the young disciple, now gradu- 
ally became more recurrent and insistent. 
But an event which about this time took 
place suddenly fanned these smouldering 
speculations into full flame. 

One placid evening, while the memory of 
the day's splendid rule still lived in the 
cool and silent air, a messenger, compassed 
with all the customary signs of grief, was 
seen slowly wending his way up the long 
avenue of cypresses which led to the great 

41 



42 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

court of the sacred college. A certain faint 
odour of sweet incense in the air and an 
occasional splash of some gentle fountain 
spoke, no doubt, to him of devotion and 
purity, and of that higher and mysterious 
Power who here deigned to heal all the 
maladies of the soul and body. He asked 
for one Apollonius of Tyana, and having 
been conducted into one of the ante- 
chambers, the walls of which were coloured 
and carved with the history of the Son of 
Apollo, he presented to the youthful 
student, who had silently entered, a letter 
with the sad intelligence that his father had 
suddenly died. The painful news so shook 
his being that it was some time before he 
could control his emotion ; and even for 
many days thereafter, neither the effluence 
of his priestly ministrations nor the absolv- 
ing calm of the sacred precincts could still 
his mind. The thought of the old home 
with all its sweet associations and his child- 
hood came to him weighted with a sorrow 
and a regret which he could scarcely bear. 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 43 

But above all broke out before his mental 
vision the great question of Life and Death. 
Before it was to him but a purely philo- 
sophic or academic question. Now it be- 
came one of supreme and intensely personal 
and practical importance. It rose and de- 
manded answer, at once immediate, clear 
and decisive. 

In common with all Hellenist culture 
Apollonius had esteemed the more beauti- 
ful and joyous aspects of life — delicate 
shapes and lovely forms, lines that would 
almost seem to be lyrical, and colours that 
would almost seem to sing. But as he 
looked on all things he saw that nothing 
remained. Nothing lived. Havra pel OvSev 
pevei. Everywhere there was disintegration 
and decay ; and that not always of a benign 
and gentle, but often of a violent and even 
cruel, character. Something, sooner or later, 
would cut athwart the sweet skein of exist- 
ing things. The flower that had but blown 
yesterday, and which would have glowed 
to-day with a surpassing beauty, was last 



44 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

night shattered by heavy rain. That little 
head of golden curls, which last week was 
a glory to behold, was now but a painful 
memory in a mother's broken heart. That 
lovely city by the sea, that city of song and 
laughter, of precious stones and fine linen, 
of rich colour and incense, in one hour, had 
come to nought, and was desolate and full 
of grief. Nothing was sure. To-morrow 
always lay behind the door of Death. But 
whether the Difficult Day came by degrees 
or of a sudden, in silence or in sound, the 
Horror inevitably fell ; until it seemed that 
behind all Life, whether in the shadow of 
night or in the blaze of midday sun, there 
ever followed " Murder with his silent 
bloody feet." He himself had been struck 
with it even as a lad. He could no doubt 
recall many a Spring when the Breath of 
Life itself appeared to inspire the whole 
Earth, just at the time when troops of 
Cappadocian youths would assemble to pay 
their customary honours to Demeter. At- 
tracted first by the sound of their simple 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 45 

hymn, which was chanted alternately by the 
rustic companies, as they moved forward in 
measured and rhythmic steps of stately pro- 
cession or solemn dance, he would draw 
near to look with a sort of natural curiosity. 
But he would grow strangely troubled as 
suddenly, in a lull between the antiphonal 
refrain, he would hear the piteous bleating 
of a little lamb, and anon he would see it, 
a victim dedicated to the Goddess, led thrice 
around the tender crops, clad in rich vest- 
ments and garlanded with flowers ; and his 
soul would shudder at the sight, and the 
pools of pity in his heart would tremble as 
he saw that the life which he loved was 
about to be quenched. 

And now at a later age, when his sensi- 
tive intellect had received an acute emotion 
and sudden stimulus in the great bereave- 
ment he had suffered, the old problem of 
Light and Darkness, of Flux and Repose, 
of the launching Lightning Flash and the 
Voice that roars after it in the Dark, pre- 
sented itself to him with inevitable urgency. 



46 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Brooding over the many speculative 
systems of philosophical culture, he felt, to a 
disturbing degree, the unsatisfying spirit of 
their results. 

Beneath the countless combinations under 
which Life was manifest ; beneath the per- 
petual cycle of Birth, Growth, Death, and 
Dissolution ; beneath the chastening separa- 
tive elements of time and place, the gulf 
betwixt soul and soul, the infinite distance 
between God and Man — was there co-ordi- 
nation or unity ? Was there a golden 
thread to be found to lead him out of this 
vast and intricate Daedalism, this agony 
that was ageless, this misery that endured ? 
For long days and through weary nights he 
sought, in severe intellectual contemplation, 
some answer to his questionings ; and partly 
through that idealism which was ever an 
element in his character and partly through 
that activity which was purely physical and 
which his physical powers demanded, his 
thoughts went back to the old, dim, theo- 
logical and supra-sensible doctrines of Py tha- 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 47 

goras — vague, of course, and very far-off, 
yet containing within themselves principles 
suggestive of harmony and unity; 1 and in 
the life of the Sage himself there was the 
example of actual and real behaviour in 
every-day life. 

But meantime the affairs of his family 
required his presence in his native city; and 
so, after some days of silent meditation, 
and pondering still, with an entirely quick- 
ened interest, all the sayings of the great 
sages on the strange and baffling Mystery 
of Death, he set out for his own country ; 
bidding farewell for a while to the peaceful 
College and carrying with him the regrets 
and sympathies of the whole JEsculapian 
brotherhood. 

On reaching Tyana he found that his 
property (for he was not yet of age) had 
been seized by his elder brother, who, with 
no eye of love, beheld him, as coming to 
demand and claim his own. But Apollonius, 
feeling it to be his vocation to renew the 

1 Vide Mahaffy's Greek World, etc., already cited. 



48 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

sacrifice of his affections and to dedicate 
himself afresh to sacred Philosophy, with 
sweet words and kind looks, bestowed half 
of his inheritance on his brother, and by 
this act reclaimed him from an evil life : for 
in very sooth the good man loves most 
and suffers most and most forgives. 

Having thus for a time freed himself 
from worldly cares, he answered with ex- 
ceeding joy the call of his heart; and with- 
drawing to the solitudes of Cappadocia and 
Cilicia he sought to honour the Silent Muse 
and by an actual example to place life above 
philosophy or reasoning — in a word to put 
his philosophical theories into real practice. 
Here for five years he preserved unbroken 
silence, contemplating divine things, until it 
almost seemed that his life had become one 
long colloquy with God. And here, in the 
deep shadows of the Taurus range or in the 
dark pass of Pylae, by the bleak and lonely 
Euxine Sea or by the sinuous bendings of 
the Halys River, he found the immense 
Peace of Nature and took it into the sane- 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 49 

tuary of his being. Welcoming it there, pre- 
serving it there, almost worshipping it there 
as the presence of a God in the shrine of his 
soul, he learnt so to identify himself with 
that Spirit, not in a momentary participation 
or fitful approach, but in the continuous 
communion which was his life, that it never 
thereafter ceased to sanctify and control his 
whole existence, passing out into all his days 
to come and projecting itself into every 
future thought and act, however trivial, 
absorbing and informing each with a des- 
tinative calm. In following this mode of 
life Apollonius was not altogether alone. 
He was merely adopting for his own re- 
quirements what had already become a fairly 
common custom throughout Greece. City 
life, in that old land of liberty, had grown so 
exacting and so full of stress that a great 
re-action had set in for a return to Nature — 
to the simple life. It was then something 
as it is to-day in England, where all the 
activities of life have centred into huge and 
hustling cities, in which the struggle to live 



50 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

is becoming fiercer every day, and the 
piteous cry of the weaker ones already fills 
the air : " Back to the land. Back to 
Nature. Back to the simple life." In the 
days of Apollonius, then, we find persons 
casting off the bonds of urban life and seek- 
ing, instead, the freedom and the calm of 
fields and forests ; and there are many 
instances of the extremes to which this life 
was carried by those whose one desire was 
to escape the weary world. 

The fame of so earnest a Solitary passed 
soon through Cappadocia, Cilicia and Pam- 
phylia ; and those who were weary with the 
weight of life, and those who were sad with 
Faith's perplexities, came, like pilgrims, to 
the haunts of the Tyanean. " Wouldest 
thou but talk with Apollonius, thy relief is 
sure." So spake the sacred Oracle of -^Egae, 
and relying upon words spoken from the 
very tripod of the God, multitudes came to 
him for comfort and for help — for the days 
of a good man are swift — some to copy the 
manner of his life, taking some of his 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 51 

heavenly acts or virtues to polish them, so 
to say, in their own persons ; others, again, 
more pious, believing in his thaumaturgic 
powers, would come that he might pray over 
them, at least silently. As it is with us 
to-day, so it was with them then, it is only 
he who doubts miracle must cease to pray, 
for when one prays one asks a miracle : but 
all, even the most wretched, wished to see 
him and, if possible, to converse with him, 
but at all events to be near him, for they 
instinctively felt, as we do in our time also, 
that in the presence of what is great and 
good there goes out a hidden virtue for the 
weak. 

So numerous and so intent did earnest 
seekers become, that a proverb swiftly ran 
amongst the inhabitants of those places, as 
they beheld the ceaseless streams of votaries 
hastening hither and thither through the 
land that they might be entered in his 
discipleship : " Whither run ye," it went ; 
"whither run ye so swift ? Is it to see the 
young man?" And the young man, 



1 



52 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

possessing this singular quality of attraction, 
was so touched with inexpressible com- 
passion for the countless souls, burdened 
with spiritual distress or bodily infirmity, 
that, though in no ways breaking through 
his self-ordained restrictions, he would 
often silently enfold in his thin palms the 
pained hand of another until, through the 
very sympathy of contact and tenderness of 
touch, it would appear that the burden of 
sorrow had passed away and the physical 
suffering had ceased to be ; or again, upon 
some other occasion, stretching forth his 
white hands over some afflicted face, he 
would say nothing, but with eyes com- 
passionate and dim would speak with tears, 
" showing kind thoughts in symbol." 

Something so full of grace and sweet, we 
are told, was in his manner of expressing 
his thoughts that his very eyes and his 
hands and the motions of his head would 
make significant answer to whatever was 
said by those who sought his counsel or his 
help. 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 53 

During the earlier part of this great 
period of silent reflection, when Loneliness 
and Silence first made for him unbroken 
paths to God, the mind of Apollonius must 
have dwelt long on the various harmonies 
of Day and Night, the moving rhythms of 
Summer and Winter, and all the recurrent 
motifs in Life and Death, which made the 
whole Universe seem Music — religious 
music with an austere and deep reserve. 

It is, of course, quite impossible for us 
now, after two thousand years, to know, not 
to say, to precise, all the various searchings 
of the mind of this son of Pythagoras 
during these years of secret communing. 
Like the "pious poet," in Tristesse de la 
Luney 1 into the hollow of whose hand the 
moon had dropped a pale tear, irised like a 
piece of opal with her own reflections, he 
has hidden the lovely pearl-like secret in 
his heart far from the eyes of our day ; but 
at least we may conjecture the movements 

1 One of Charles Baudelaire's poems in Les Fleurs du 
Mai (Calmann-Levy. Paris). 



54 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

of his mind, as following the mystic 
measures and inward music of his great 
master, and studying, in his own vital ex- 
periences, his exquisite science of Harmony 
and Law, Proportion and Number, he 
arrived gradually at the conception of the 
abstract Unity of God. Ideas which had 
formerly met and long struggled within his 
soul, and problems in Life and Philosophy 
which long had seemed irreconcilable, now 
appeared to harmonise and resolve in the 
new Synthesis ; for he saw — indistinctly at 
first, but nevertheless with an increasing 
clearness — beneath the multiplicity of gods, 
beneath all gods, but one God, and in all 
their various rites and worships but the 
Protean shapes of one Divinity ; and also 
beneath the multiplicity of life, beneath all 
life, but one Life — Life deathless and strong 
— the Life the Gods or rather the God en- 
joyed in full, the Life Man partook of in 
part. He felt that under the superficial 
aspect of all life ; beneath its fleeting forms 
and changing colours, melodies, and per- 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 55 

fumes ; beneath the various and ever fugi- 
tive phases or states which mortals name 
Birth, Growth, Decay, Death, and the like, 
was the basal Life-stream, the eternal Life- 
force in ceaseless energy, on the surface of 
which he himself existed for a moment, 
participating for that moment, in some 
measure, in its vitality. So beneath all life 
there was one Life. Though men died, yet 
there lived the mighty dead, inasmuch as 
Life and Death grew out of the one Stem. 
There was Life deeper, more intimate than 
that whereof men knew — a Life which 
bound in one the living and the dead ; a 
Life which was the Life of the Eternal God. 
And since all life was one, the human soul 
was linked to the Divine by identity of 
Substance, the Ethereal Light Substance, 
which Apollonius conceived to be the 
Essence of the Deity, and which he believed 
was shared, in a lesser or greater degree, 
by the soul that is good. So he, devoted 
to the service of the divine, believed that 
he himself was in a sense divine, and in a 



S6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

sense God. The lesser or greater degree 
of deification depended entirely upon him- 
self, who could annihilate it by an evil life 
or could develop it by a pure and excellent 
one. Exceptional holiness would produce 
exceptional wisdom ; and exceptional wisdom 
would produce exceptional fulness of Life. 
Hence, he appraised the necessity for the 
uplifted life, the life free from all excess or 
intemperance, the ascetic life, keeping the 
custody of the senses, guarding the gravity 
of the outer man, presenting sweetness of 
manner to all and severity towards himself, 
refraining from destroying any life what- 
ever, on account of its inestimable value, 
and even refusing to eat flesh or to drink 
wine lest such an act would profane, though 
but in a minor degree, what was after all to 
him the only true temple in all the world — 
the temple of the human body. Thus the 
new Life — a nuova vita — opened out before 
him, broadening ever more and more and 
demanding in the devious byways, no 
less than in the main avenue, of his life 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 57 

a care and attention which he had thereto- 
fore not even suspected. O fair white 
Hands, how can you now touch feet that 
are foul ? O gentle Eyes, bright with the 
burning breath of an unimaginable beauty, 
how can you bear to gaze on souls that are 
deformed ? Why do you now seek for 
faces that are tinted with the wan hues of 
pain or decay as at something lacking in 
the fulness of life or the perfection of 
form ? 

In every dead rose there is the remem- 
brance of the colour of the Dawn. In 
every death-bell the memorare of the Angelus ; 
and in the mystery of Death is wrapped 
the mystery of immortal Love. And so 
it was that by the method of Pythagoras, 
of him who had attuned the ears of 
men to measured movement and ordered 
melody, the formerly insoluble mystery of 
sorrow and suffering seemed to clear, and 
the early difficulty of decay and death to 
melt away. These, heretofore, seemed out 
of place in the economy of life. Now 



58 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

they had their rightful setting there. There 
was the divine necessity of death. There 
was also the divine necessity of suffering. 
Ael iraQelv. Aei aTrapvrjcrao-Qai eavrov. He 
must renounce this fugitive phase that men 
name life in order to gain the fulness of 
the endless and fundamental Life. And in 
this renunciation he would find increase of 
virtue. Virtus vulnere virescit. 

In his younger days he had instinctively 
sought Good. When, at times, he joined 
in the solemn Olacroi and sacred opyecove? 
how many a secret joy had he not experi- 
enced, as in some marvellously rich moments 
of supreme adoration he had felt himself, 
as it would seem to him, seized and flooded 
with an inexpressible measure of the Divine 
Light-Substance, with a sense of a Presence 
that could only be of God ! But now 
there must be also the more strenuous 
hours, the days that would be difficult, the 
years that would be dark. Strenuous, 
difficult, and dark they might be, but in the 
arid wastes he at least would now see 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 59 

streams of waters bursting forth, and where 
desert places were, there would be pools 
moving with the music of tall reeds and 
green grass. A highway would be there 
and a way. A way called the way of holi- 
ness, where the unclean in heart and lips 
could not pass, but where the pure in heart, 
though simple, could not lose his way or 
err. 

There is a picture in the Louvre which, 
though unfinished, is so graciously and so 
subtly conceived that some have, not in- 
judiciously, ascribed it to Leonardo da 
Vinci, that master of complex meanings and 
strangely implicated thoughts in line and 
colour. It is entitled A Bacchus. Far 
away, through a liquid splendour of midday 
heat and mist, peers a low but massive 
mountain. Midway in heaven's high blue 
a slender birch hangs out its delicacies of 
silvery foliage, floating all tremulous and 
pale. On a nearer, though still distant, 
slope, a dappled deer with lifted antlers 
scents the air ; and the green sward close 



60 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

by is bright with flowers. But in the cool 
shade of a rich brown bank is seated one — 
prominent and grand — whose splendid and 
naked loveliness is a delight to see. His 
eyes, deep, dark and purple-warm, are those 
of a god. A god's, too, his brow, decked 
with the vine-leaf. The Bacchic thyrsus lies 
along his curved arm. His countenance is 
earnest. His gaze intense. He wins your 
attention — but only to divert it. With long 
and fascinating forefinger he points invit- 
ingly from the sunlit champaign to some- 
thing dark, far-off and unknown. Then 
in some unimaginable way the loin-cloth 
of leopard's fur becomes a girdle of 
camel's hair ; the slanting thyrsus a desert 
staff; and the form of earnest entreaty 
a prophet. Surely it is the Baptist who, 
turning his back upon the sunlit world, 
would have you know that more enduring 
joys lie beyond that impenetrable darkness 
towards which he points. And well might 
this canvas depict Apollonius of Tyana 
during the period of his reclusion in the fairer 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 61 

fields of silent Cappadocia, directing, so to 
say, the passer-by or devoted inquirer away 
from the wearying brightness and passing 
pleasures of his ephemeral day to the mystery 
of a peace far off and unknown, and only to 
be attained by passing through the shadows 
and severities of life. 



IV 

THE ACTIVE LIFE 

T>UT now for him the contemplative life 
had ceased. The active was to begin. 
The long period of extreme mental tension 
had ended. A fresh mode of life was to 
be undertaken. 

Some say that those long years of severe 
self-restraint formed the appointed initiation 
into the Pythagorean brotherhood. We can 
find no organised Pythagorean society, no 
actual brotherhood, into which at the time 
Apollonius was received. On the contrary, 
we find him then Master : a follower indeed 
of Pythagoras, but yet a Master. He 
calls disciples : they follow. He commands : 
they obey. 

He was already famous. Renowned for 
his skill in the intricate laws of ritual and 

62 



THE ACTIVE LIFE 63 

the hieratic mysteries, he was yet more 
celebrated for the spiritual heights and lofty 
mental planes to which he had attained. 
His speech too had in it a kind of celestial 
eloquence, so excellent indeed and so 
weighted with rich thought that, it is said, 
his very words were collected as in chalices 
out of which all who would quenched their 
thirst ; and the graces of his person were so 
attractive that they were even remarkable in 
a land where beauty of form or address was 
the common property of the race. 

Yet there were deeper excellences to be 
acquired, wider aims to be achieved, higher 
powers to be attained. Whither then would 
he go ? To Greece, the home of all culture, 
the hearth whereon the fire of faith and 
science had been kindled and had flamed ? 
No, not now. Some centuries ago, if he 
had then lived, he might have looked to 
Athens or to Corinth. But not now. For 
with the Roman conquest of Greece, Mace- 
donia and Asia Minor, the fairer religions 
of Greece had become degraded to a con- 



64 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

siderable extent by the materialistic Latin 
thought. Even then, in Apollonius's time, 
Hellenic religion was vastly higher than 
Roman. It always was. The Romans never 
possessed a true religious sense. A hard 
and narrow ceremonialism satisfied them. 
They produced no legends. They evolved 
no myths. They never even conceived of 
Gods. They made no representations of 
them. They worshipped they knew not 
what. Such they were in earlier times. 
Such they were really still. The Greeks, on 
the other hand, were by nature devout and 
imaginative. Their religions were expansive, 
flexible, adaptable. They marked the spi- 
ritual forces behind the natural phenomena. 
They conceived of these forces as deities ; 
and they gave them form in metal and stone 
and clay. The Greek artist pursued these 
conceptions ; and his sculptured or molten 
figures were no mere idols, but the repre- 
sentations of the mysterious Powers behind 
the natural objects of sense. Stand to-day 
before a marble statue of some noble Posei- 



THE ACTIVE LIFE 6$ 

don or Glaucus, and you too will seem to 
hear the surging of the great waters in those 
ears, and you too will see all the ocean 
floating in those eyes. The Greeks believed 
in these forces. The Romans did not. The 
Greek approached them with head uncovered. 
The Roman refused to bare his head. The 
sons of Italy, if they prayed at all, prayed 
for such solid blessings as food and land and 
money. The sons of Greece sought for 
moral force and spiritual excellence ; for the 
Eastern counted on a future existence, the 
Western only on the present. 

Hence one of the results of the Roman 
conquest and her sway was to lower and 
materialise Greek spiritual thought. 

It may be well to qualify here the word 
" religion " as used in regard to the old 
Hellenic world. Religion, as we know it — 
the worship of a Supreme Being, ineffable, in- 
visible, incomprehensible and eternal — was 
then non-existent. Even in the period of the 
highest culture it did not exist. Nay, it was 
actually avoided ; and one might almost say 



66 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

that because it was avoided that lofty 
culture was reached. For the excellences of 
all Greek Art were achieved through the 
frank recognition of the limited scope of 
human powers. Within the definite bounds 
of the human mind, which they had explored 
and charted as we chart the seas, perfection 
was sought and attained. Outside that they 
refused to go. They never soared after the 
infinite God. He was out of sight, out of 
range, unknowable. Their very philosophies 
turned deliberately away from Him. Religion 
as the Greeks knew it for some centuries 
before the Christian era was the personifica- 
tion and cultus, always local and particular, 
of the vast and minor forces, full of mystery 
to their minds, of Wind and Sea and Forest 
and Mountain, and the Power behind all 
objects of sense and motion and thought. 
In course of time wider conceptions and 
deeper beliefs came in from Egypt through 
Crete and from the Far East countries. 
Amongst these newer faiths and rites were 
the Mysteries, but they were separate from, 



THE ACTIVE LIFE 67 

and indeed antagonistic to, the true Hellenic 
culture. Time was to bring its revenge, 
and the years, ay the centuries, were to come 
when Greek minds would be all aflame with 
desire to sound the fathomless Thought of 
God, and when they would scale heights in 
the Nature and Essence of the Divine Being 
such as were never scaled before or since. 
But the time had not yet come. It was but 
the earliest moments of the Dawn. And 
here in the faintly tracked ways of early 
spiritual adventure we can trace the first 
sure desires for the Day, the first gropings 
towards the distant Light. And in the poor 
magician and dreamer, Apollonius of Tyana, 
we can see one who, looking up to heaven, 
essayed to ascend thither and to soar out of 
the narrow bounds and definite limits of 
human experience. 

Another result of Roman rule was its 
withering effect upon the material and social 
life of the Greek-speaking peoples. We 
have noted how the religion of Rome was 
inferior to that of Greece. She was also 



68 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

lower in the scale of civilisation. With her 
practical common sense she had recognised 
this ; and had left most of the great Greek 
social institutions intact to the conquered 
provinces. But otherwise her sway was 
blighting. Her financial administration was 
unjust and immoral. It depopulated and 
impoverished the whole Empire ; and it 
ruined the general material prosperity and 
the moral constitution of Hellenic cities 
and lands. Rome drained the wealth of all 
her conquered provinces, and the vast 
Empire was plundered for the support of the 
Imperial City. The accumulated treasures 
of centuries were shamefully dispersed in 
maintaining immense armies and in supply- 
ing grain gratuitously to feed hundreds of 
thousands of her idle citizens. As a con- 
sequence social and moral energy had de- 
clined. Honest labour was despised and 
considered a degradation. Corruption was 
rampant and religion was decadent. Count- 
less numbers of Greeks were compelled to 
sell themselves as slaves because they could 



THE ACTIVE LIFE 69 

not pay the extortionate and cruel im- 
positions. The slave market was the only 
prosperous one. 

Even many years after, when Apollonius 
was in the old land of liberty, endeavouring 
to reform her religion and rekindle her 
faith, he felt compelled to write to the 
Museum at Alexandria, then the great centre 
of learning and culture of the civilised 
world, in such words as these : efiapftapdoOrjv 
ov xpovios cop a<p JLAAaoo? aAAa XP 0V10 $ °° v ev 
f EAAa&. " I have become barbarised, not by 
staying away from Greece, but by staying in 
Greece." 

How could he then turn Westward and 
look there for hope of better things ? How 
could he draw inspiration from the mate- 
rialistic Roman ? The love of his country 
was in his heart. He longed to see her 
restored and reformed morally and spirit- 
ually : and his one clear and definite aim 
now was to fit himself for the great work — 
the work of his life — the restoration and 
revival of true religion, as he knew it, not 



70 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

only in his own Hellenic land, but through- 
out the Roman Empire. A vast under- 
taking, a tremendous task ! And where 
could he fit himself properly and adequately 
for it ? Where, but in the East, whence 
had always come the higher faiths and hopes, 
the devotions and enthusiasms, without 
which religion is vain ? Did not the Samian 
Sage himself seek, centuries previous, the 
lands beneath the rising sun and hold con- 
verse there with people pre-eminent in 
virtue and spiritual adventure ? And Apol- 
lonius felt that he too must follow that 
great example if he were to succeed in the 
vast undertaking proposed to himself — the 
spiritual regeneration of life in the whole 
Roman and Hellenic world. 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 

^HE call of many countries was in his 
ears. Where the voice of Wisdom 
called, there he would go — be it to the land 
of the Arabian famous for his perfumes, 
or to Egypt the country whence all the 
Gods, save Poseidon and Here, had come, 
or to the land upon the extreme verge 
of the world, beyond the confines of the 
flowing-robed Arsacidae, beneath the earliest 
beams of the rising stars, where the keen 
crescent first cuts the blue. Yes ! There 
from that far-off land of India the call was 
clearest. And there first he went. 

Fastidious, not only in his person, but in 
his speech, he attached, prior to his de- 
parture, two domestics as secretaries, one 
eminent for the despatch with which he 

71 



72 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

wrote and the other for the remarkable 
beauty and the artistic form of his lettering. 

On entering Mesopotamia, the Custom- 
house officer approached the travellers with 
his toll-book and requested the Sage to 
declare, for excisable purposes, what com- 
modities he was bringing into the country. 
" Patience, Temperance, Justice, and Forti- 
tude," replied Apollonius, naming these and 
other virtues by feminine names. The tax 
collector wrote each down carefully in his 
book and then inquired if they were his 
maids. " No," answered the philosopher, 
" they are my Mistresses." 

After spending some time at Nineveh, 
where Damis, his disciple and fidus Achates^ 
attached himself to his person, and having 
visited the great King of Babylon, he set 
out, with his followers, for India, mounted 
upon the royal camels and preceded by one 
bearing an ornament of gold upon its 
forehead, signifying thereby that one of the 
King's friends was on the road. 

Each day the desire of the spiritual East 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 73 

grew more and more on him ; and each day 
above the mighty Himalaya with their 
immense and silver screen of fretted pallid 
peaks, he saw, flashing more and more 
resplendent (for it was approaching summer) 
the glorious solar diadem of the Deity. 
Day by day he journeyed on 

O'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, 

wending his way through maze of mist and 
mountain, where no tree or flower could 
live, and snatching some little repose at 
times beneath the immense white Moon, 
the great Jewel of Asia, the Virginal Queen 
of Heaven, until at length he came to places 
clothed with aromatic plants, and saw the 
warm cinnamon growing on the high hills 
and the incense-bearing trees flowering in 
the valleys. 

By many strange waters and sacred rivers 
he passed, and anon with joy beheld dark 
pilgrims, with eyes devout and mournful, 
pacing in prayer by their banks, calling the 



74 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

streams by their names, and casting sweet- 
smelling flowers and fragrant spices into 
their softly murmuring waves. 

In fine, after many months, the little 
party reached the sacred goal of their pil- 
grimage, the mystic Monsalvat, the Holy 
Hill inhabited by the Wise Men of the 
East. High up the mountain stood, like 
the Acropolis of Athens, defended on all 
sides by immense piles of rocks. A great 
mist crowned the summit, which seemed to 
raise itself aloft beyond the clouds into the 
very intimate music of the spheres. 

Here now, at last, was the veritable Gar- 
den of the Gods, the paradise of solitary 
souls, where minds, alert and attentive, 
might enter and breathe a rarer and diviner 
air, and where, in its immense peace, the 
repose and sweet savour of contemplation, 
so ardently desired, could at length be fully 
attained. 

With a graciousness refined to a perfect 
degree, the whole fraternity — both aged 
professors and young students — of the <ppov- 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 75 

Tio-rrjpiov received the Alastor-like guest; for 
he seemed to them like "a poet who had 
wandered all his life long through the world, 
seeking with a heart on fire for the flower- 
like face he could never find " : and, on his 
part, he found in the brethren men who 
cared not for the propagation of the vine or 
the tilling of the ground, but who cultivated 
instead a knowledge and wisdom higher and 
more celestial than that known in Greece 
— men whose very language was a sort of 
shrine and whose souls seemed to be deep 
reservoirs of divine resignation. He could 
not contemplate their faces but he saw in 
them as it were something of the solemn 
light of temples ; and the still atmosphere, 
of which they almost seemed a part, appeared 
to possess in itself the gentle melancholy of 
a faint breeze which bears the soft tolling of 
a far-off passing-bell. 

Ascetics such as these which greeted 
Apollonius are not unknown to-day even 
outside of Buddhist lands ; for in our own 
Europe one may see something of the same 



76 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

peculiar temper in Sclavonic recluses. In 
that land of immensity, of loneliness and 
silence, where nothing is relative and every- 
thing is absolute, there live, dispersed 
through dim forest and barren steppe, by 
the great Volga or in the Ural range, men 
who, like Saint Sergius, have fled the world, 
who touch no flesh, but exist only on herbs, 
roots, and nuts, and who live alone, pursu- 
ing and penetrating ideas and ever saturating 
their souls with the immense Thought of 
God. 1 Or, again, in the Dominion of Canada 
there are Christian communities so strange 
that with them to eat meat is a brigandage, 
to drink milk a theft. A little calf they 
compare to a little child. " What would 
you say," they ask naively, " if some one 
took away your infant's milk ? " And in 
such words as these they pray at seedtime : 
"O Lord, cause the seed to grow for all 
creatures ; for animal and bird ; for the 
beggar, for he can ask for it ; for the robber 

1 Cf. Vavenir de VEglise Russe, by Joseph Wilbois 
(Bloud. Paris, 1907), pp. 157, 207, and 259. 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 77 

if he wishes to steal ; give to him also his 
portion/' 

A like curious delicacy of feeling is seen 
in the manner in which even the rudest 
Russian peasant regards ordinary bread, for 
he would never throw it to his dogs for 
food, in that he holds all bread to be sancti- 
fied, in some sense, from the time the Master 
took a loaf into His holy hands and 
blessed it, saying, "This is My body." 1 

And if in this twentieth century we find 
among many peoples a sort of exquisite 
refinement in the choice of physical susten- 
ance, lest that subtle associate of the body, 
the soul, be hampered, even in a minor 
degree, through the appetites, in its spiritual 
ascensions, we in England, who understand 
so well the pains of the flesh and so little 
the pangs of the spirit, may at least cease to 
be astonished at these little austerities exer- 
cised by races more psychic and more ideal 
than our own. 

We, with our strong practical nature, too 
1 Vide Vavenir de PEglise Russe, cited above. 



78 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

often profess a profound pity, a pity beyond 
words, for the soul that is lacerated with 
the sense of the Ideal. Ideals, we seem to 
believe, are the Tragedies of Man. And the 
man whose life contains great Ideals is the 
man whose life contains great Tragedies. 

For four months Apollonius remained 
the guest of these gentle Indian ascetics — 
these little brothers of St. Francis, if we 
might so call them. 

They initiated him early into the very 
arcana of their mysteries ; and we may take 
the passage, in which Philostratus records 
the rite, as a figurative, if not as a true 
description of part of that sacred ceremony. 
We find there delineated the solemn anoint- 
ing of his person with fragrant chrism, the 
Fire of Pardon ; the ritual ablution of his 
members with lustral waters, the Well of 
Discovery ; the crowning of his head with 
incense-bearing blossoms ; and the final pro- 
cession to the illuminated chapel with the 
whole fraternity singing hymns with all due 
reverence, and forming within its sacred pre- 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 79 

cincts the figure of the ancient Greek chorus, 
with the Superior as coryphaeus, the paeans 
sounding not unlike those stately strophes of 
Sophocles which were sung at Athens in 
honour of iEsculapius. During the period 
of his residence with the monks Apollonius 
occupied himself with learning all they taught 
him of their hidden wisdom, testing their 
philosophical conclusions, and exercising 
himself daily in their contemplative devo- 
tions ; and to such a singular degree was he 
impressed by the extraordinary height of 
ecstatic contemplation to which many of 
them attained that he was compelled to 
exclaim, " I have seen, I have seen the 
Brahmins of India dwelling on the earth 
and yet not on the earth, possessing nothing 
and yet having all things." 

In their spiritual experiences he found 
the confirmation of his own, and learnt 
that at least with them " death was thought 
to be no evil, but only inevitable change j 1 

1 Cf. In the Great God's Hair^ translated from the Hindu 
by F. W. Bain (Parker, 1904), pp. 44.-47 and 89. 



80 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

that no one is ever really born or ever 
really dies, for that life is simply a state 
of being visible and then being invisible ; 
and that " true life consists in ceasing to 
have any affection even for life itself (as his 
famous countryman St. Basil the Great 
enunciated some centuries later), and in 
bearing the judgment of death in oneself 
so that one might not trust in oneself." 

Among the many subjects discussed with 
the sages, Apollonius took especial delight 
in their views of the nature of the soul, 
Foreknowledge (Ilpoyj/coo-^), and Self-know- 
ledge (the TvooOi creavTov) ; and he learnt 
more fully from their discourses what 
were the rules and principles of the 
understanding, what the functions of the 
body, how many the faculties of the 
soul, and how many the mutations which 
devolve hereafter upon the souls of the 
departed according to their deserts. On 
leaving, with deep regret, this home of 
wisdom, the seers provided him with a 
guide and camels for his journey, while some 



APOLLONIUS TRAVELS TO INDIA 81 

of the more intimate of the brethren court- 
eously accompanied him on part of his way, 
and only quitted him after many farewells, 
assuring him that he would be considered as 
a god not only after his death, but in his 
lifetime, and expressing much sorrow at his 
departure, and only returning to their 
monastery after casting many looks behind. 



VI 

HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 

/^\N his return to Asia Minor he began at 
once to reform and edify the various 
religious confraternities and social guilds, 
visiting temples and oracles and discoursing 
with the priests on sacrifices and oblations, 
their proper matter and the hours of 
libations ; for holding in inestimable regard 
Life in all its multiple manifestations, he 
would abolish all animal sacrifice, as some- 
thing abhorrent to the great Demiourgos, of 
whom all things have genesis^ and would 
substitute therefor an offering without 
blood. 

Chief among the great cities and centres 
of worship which he visited now was 
Ephesus. There the proud goddess Diana 
displayed her wealth and magnificence in 

82 



HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 83 

flowering groves and parks and in mighty 
mansions and splendid workshops. Busy- 
streets resounded everywhere with the silver 
sound of little hammers or with the deeper 
vibrations of smitten bronze. But all these 
marks of her patronage she crowned with 
her immense temple, whose glorious pillars 
of marble, mellowed by age and atmosphere, 
gleamed like gold, and whose interior, 
glistening with superb reliefs of polished 
silver, shone emblematical of her voluptuous 
virginity. Here on the arrival of Apollonius 
the craftsmen held high festival and left 
their silver metal-work, the commerce of 
their day, to follow the Teacher, some 
admiring him for the beauty of his form 
and the singularly artistic folds of his robes, 
others for his wisdom and holiness : all for 
some reason or other. 

As his eyes looked upon that fair city 
— that city which St. Paul had probably just 
visited — dwelling amid its choice trees and 
stately monuments, one of those strange 
moods of prophetic inspiration with which 



84 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

at times he was moved fell upon him, and 
he spoke of the near advent of that great 
human scourge, the plague, which shortly 
afterwards came upon that splendid city, 
and left it stricken and desolate, with streets 
deserted, and villas ruined, and with no 
lamps burning before its shrines. 

Jealous of her sister city, Smyrna sent a 
special embassage to the sacred man, without 
giving any reason for the mission (according 
to his devoted biographer Philostratus), but 
merely urging his coming. When the Sage 
inquired of the ambassadors for what pur- 
pose they had come to him, they replied, 
" To see you, O Apollonius, and to be seen 
by you." No doubt the real reason of 
the invitation was to attend the great 
Panionian assembly which at this time was 
about to meet in honour of Poseidon ; and 
here we may catch something of the virility 
and morality of the man, for he openly 
rebuked the assembled councillors for their 
barbarism in signing their decrees in Roman, 
instead of in their own Greek, names, thus 



HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 85 

forgetting the patriotism which was due to 
their own country, and also (and surely this 
was the real reason) forgetting their duty to 
it ; for those who would avoid paying the 
heavy taxes, and who would grind the faces 
of their poor fellow-countrymen without let 
or hindrance, became in many instances 
Roman citizens to this end alone, and thus 
contributed to the further demoralisation of 
the land. 

A similar courage was displayed by him 
when later he received the embassage of the 
chiefs of Olympia, who approached him with 
their homage. In gentle but firm words he 
chid them on their lack of manly bearing: 
for he saw nothing of old Sparta in their 
appearance. Odours steeped their hair, 
and their faces were beardless and white ; 
their garments were soft and effeminate, 
and all their limbs were smooth and 
glistening. They looked as if they had 
breathed the air of Sybaris all their lives. 
His words had the happy effect of reviving 
their ancient spirit, that of the old Palaestra, 



86 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

and not long afterwards they announced to 
him the reformation of their mode of life. 

But the festival of the great and tre- 
mendous mysteries, the Eleusinian Mys- 
teries, was approaching ; and the desire of 
Apollonius went forth to that devotional 
rite. Making his way to Athens, he sought 
initiation into these the most glorious and 
spiritual of ancient Greek ceremonies. In 
many places throughout Greece the Eleusinia 
were celebrated, but only at Eleusis did they 
possess a supreme significance, a profound 
mystical instinct, a spiritual anticipation of 
a future and eternal life. 

For nine days he made the appointed 
ways and all the sacred " stations " of the 
via dolorosa from Athens to Eleusis, visiting 
the Great Sea, joining in the torch-bearing 
processions, making pilgrimages to the Holy 
Well, the Threshing-floor, and the Stone 
of Sorrow, whereon Demeter, the mother of 
divine sorrow, sat weeping for our poor 
humanity and mystically yearning to bestow 
immortality upon our frail mortality. 



HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 87 

He was much disturbed in spirit at the 
manner in which he saw the Athenians 
celebrating certain introductory parts of this 
august rite ; for on entering the theatre 
to hear " the monodies and the melodies 
and the songs of the chorus and the notes 
which they sing in both tragedy and 
comedy," he found to his disappointment 
that the performance was mostly composed 
of " dancing, and of dancing to the effemi- 
nate flute. " The stately lyre, used in the 
festivals of the Gods, was absent ; and the 
divine epics of Orpheus were debased by 
voluptuous and shameful representations. 
No doubt the performance was provided for 
"the people," but the good man could not 
refrain himself from rebuking the whole 
gathering openly. Whether it was due to 
his forcibly expressed censure or not, it is 
hard to say, but the hierophant of the Mys- 
teries now refused him initiation. Never- 
theless on the tenth morning, when, as the 
myth goes, Hecate meets Demeter bearing 
a light in her hands looking for her child 



88 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

and uttering wild cries to Zeus for its return, 
all the devout, and we may assume Apol- 
lonius to have been of their number, entered 
the splendid temple of Demeter, traversing its 
immense white marble pavement and passing 
through its great propylaea and corridors, un- 
til they stood within the sacred shrine itself. 
Let us picture the scene, for it is a 
wonderful and uplifting sight. In the outer 
precincts stands the great expectant crowd, 
both Mystae or purified ones and Epoptae 
or initiated. The Night has come. In the 
glimmer of torch and ceremonial lights, made 
dimmer by the all-pervading incense-smoke, 
the faces that are worn with prayer and fast- 
ing take to themselves something of strange 
and unearthly beauty. It is dark and it is 
silent. For Darkness shuts out the world 
and Silence shuts in the soul ; and in the Dark- 
ness is the Light of Heaven and in the Silence 
is the Voice of God ; and so the soul can fully 
utter itself, feeling instinctively that here 
vibrates, as through the countless centuries, 
all the joys and sorrows of aspiring souls. 



HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 89 

Yes, there is Night : but all anticipate the 
Dawn. There is Silence ; but all await the 
Voice. And in the heart of all is the old 
story of Demeter, the great Earth-Mother, 
the Goddess of the corn that is sown in 
darkness and that rises in the white light 
of Spring. Death and Life are near. They 
meet. Fear and Hope, Night and Day, 
touch. They mingle. It is a solemn hour ; 
for it is, as it were, the standing on the 
brink of Death, with the faith that Heaven 
is there also. 

But soon the doors of the great Cella, 
the inmost sanctuary, the holy of holies, 
are opened for those who are prepared. 
The Prayer beforehand was only Approach 
to the Divine : but Communion now will be 
Contact. That Prayer was but the Desire 
for the Day ; the passionate Longing for 
the Face of God. But Communion will be 
Vision. It will be sunlight breaking upon 
a thousand hills. So, one by one, they pass 
in. They are known by their names, for 
the names of those that have " won their 



90 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

freedom " are inscribed in a scroll. Still 
there is Silence like the silence of the grave. 
It is the introitus, the entrance into the 
Great Mystery, the Mystery of Death. On 
the lips of each is laid a golden key that 
they may be sealed for ever, and may for 
ever guard unuttered what is about to be 
committed to them then. We may not 
know all the rest. Yet we may perhaps 
believe that a white basket, decked with 
poppies and pomegranates — emblems of 
Death bearing within itself the countless 
seeds of Life — is brought around, contain- 
ing other symbols of Life arising from 
Death, for the worshippers to touch, and 
they touch. Then is offered to each a cup 
of corn-wine to drink, and each drinks, 
and a marvellous refreshment follows the 
draught, for it is a sort of divine com- 
munion, an imparting to the participant of 
a new and eternal life ; and the wondrous 
words " Thou art become God from man " 
are communicated to each enlightened soul. 
Then they pass out joyfully into the golden 



HE VISITS ASIA MINOR AND GREECE 91 

light of the irradiant day, and, as though 
some cunningly devised door were suddenly 
withdrawn, all the fresh glory of a new 
world is laid before their illuminated eyes 
— fair fields and multicoloured meadows, 
bright with starlike flowers, all delicately 
awake and trembling in the calm, sweet 
sunlight of a new day. They are The Blessed 
Fields^ the Fields of Rest and Joy, for those 
that are worthy. Concurrently, heavenly 
voices rise in hymns of gladness, holy to 
hear ; and in strophe and antistrophe the 
grand old Homeric hymn breaks forth in 
a kind of glorious antiphonal thunder. 
Through it comes the sound of moving feet, 
the mystic dance, and the impressive drama of 
Demeter and Kore is offered to all. The tense 
Silence and awful Darkness are no more. 
Here is movement, action, life ; and at the 
close the whole company bursts forth into 
songs of rejoicings and relief, and hymn on 
hymn arises, until it would almost seem as 
if already the frail forms of humanity there 
present had really been lifted up, and had 



92 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

entered, by intensity of anticipation, into 
the New Life, the Life which is eternal, 
holy, and divine. 

While at Athens Apollonius corrected the 
gross abuse of gladiatorial displays ; for 
brigands and cutpurses and housebreakers 
and all manner of murderous men were 
openly bought at high prices in the market, 
and were then armed and forced to fight in 
the arena, to please the public passion for 
blood-letting. Thus, here and there, through 
Asia Minor, Greece, and the isles of the 
Archipelago, the Sage travelled, at times 
performing (as some would believe) strange 
and miraculous acts, such as evoking the 
spirit of Achilles at Troy, discerning daemoni- 
acal possession, revealing a Lamia and fore- 
telling earthquake and troubles, but (be that 
as it may) at least teaching men better 
things and uplifting the general level of 
religious and social life, praising order and 
decency where conspicuous, and censuring 
all that would call for rebuke. 



VII 

HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 

T\TEANTIME it appeared to Apollonius 
that the Imperial City of Rome was 
in need of his chastening zeal. Strange 
spectacles were being witnessed there daily. 
The Emperor Nero was to be seen frequently 
driving chariots furiously through the streets, 
singing on public stages, and even fighting 
in gladiatorial combats. It seemed in the eyes 
of Apollonius as if the whole city would be 
demoralised by such an evil example in high 
places unless corrected. He decided to visit 
the town with his reforming and beneficent 
measures. Frequenting the temples, as was 
his custom, he quickened at once the public 
spirit of devotion. To whatsoever shrine 
he repaired, there also the people flocked ; 
for so influential was he with the Gods, 

93 



94 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

in their opinion, that they expected greater 
favours in those temples where he was than 
in any others ; and, in consequence, sweet- 
smelling sacrifices and numberless oblations 
were offered with an unknown fervour to 
the Immortals. To the inhabitants he was 
swiftly and favourably known by reason of 
a signal manifestation of his healing powers, 
for he had thrilled the city with a remark- 
able proof of his peculiar persuasion with 
the Gods. One evening, on the outskirts of 
the mighty city, his eyes caught the sight of 
a large funeral pyre which was being pre- 
pared. Around it a vast multitude was 
gathering in soiled garments and great grief. 
He approached the place and, as is the 
nature of the human mind, begged to learn 
for whom it was. With much lamentation 
he was informed that it was for a young girl 
who, on the eve of her wedding day, had 
died, and that her obsequies would be fol- 
lowed by the flower of Rome's nobility, for 
her family was of consular rank. Soon a 
long and melancholy procession drew nigh, 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 95 

all damp with rain, while the cries of the 
mourners filling the air intensified the sorrow 
of the scene. Meeting the sad convoy, the 
blessed man bid the attendants to set down 
the bier, and he inquired her name. The 
procession halted, and all the wailing grew 
hushed, for it was thought the holy man 
was about to pronounce, as was sometimes 
customary, a funeral address. But he, look- 
ing upon the maiden, touched her hand, 
and, his pity revealing itself in his gentle 
eyes, he called her in a soft and compassion- 
ate voice, and wakened the girl from her 
seeming death. Straightway she sat up and 
began to speak, and, like Alcestis when 
recalled to life by Hercules, was able to 
return to her father's house. Thus it was 
that he wooed back to life the soul which, 
to all appearances, seemed extinct and took 
away death from her who was to be the 
banquet of the tomb, even as she lay gar- 
landed upon the bier, perfumed and anointed 
with odorous unguents. 

It may be that the reforming zeal of Apol- 



96 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

lonius found vent in rash acts and utter- 
ances or in censuring the Caesar's mode of 
life too severely, for it is said that on one 
occasion he rebuked the buffoonery of the 
Emperor when he stated that "even the 
Gods were to be forgiven if they took pleas- 
ure in fools " ; but, at all events, the 
Emperor, notwithstanding his democratic 
pleasures and associations, made a decree in 
the year 6$ a.d. banishing every philo- 
sopher from Rome ; and Apollonius with 
all the race of these republican thinkers was 
compelled to quit the Imperial City, 

On leaving Italy, Apollonius went west as 
far as the Pillars of Hercules, stayed at 
Sicily, and then revisited Greece, pursuing 
his object of elevating the spiritual tone of 
society. At Athens, the repentant hiero- 
phant who had previously refused him 
initiation now received him gladly into the 
Eleusinian Brotherhood ; but there were 
still habits and customs to be reformed, for 
we find him denouncing those who " hawked 
about little images of Dionysus and De- 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 97 

meter " for sale, describing their trade as a 
" species of horrid gain " and as a profana- 
tion " feeding upon the Gods." 

About this time (66-67 A - D -) the Emperor 
Nero was in Greece celebrating the Olym- 
pian Games, and was also continuing there 
his musical and literary extravaganzas. This 
superb Festival originally lasted five days. 
The symbol of the Unity of Greece, it 
renewed the thought and expressed the fact 
that, beneath all superficial separation, the 
great Nation of wide-scattered Greeks was 
one in blood and speech and art. Here at 
Olympia, where no woman was permitted 
to attend, the Treaties of the various States 
were proclaimed ; their Crowns of Friend- 
ship conferred upon each other ; and their 
glorious heroes and statesmen publicly 
honoured ; so that the whole of Olympia 
rang during the Feast with the choice and 
cultured hymns of Greek poets and the 
majestic periods of Greek orators. To his 
accomplishments of artist and athlete Nero 
added, while there, that of engineer ; and he 



98 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

attempted, but failed, to cut the Isthmus of 
Corinth. The close proximity of the august 
Presence was not altogether desirable, and 
perhaps not even without danger, to Apol- 
lonius, to whom " his digging was as 
unfinished as his singing," and it behoved 
the Sage to seek " pastures new." 

One country besides India had always 
claimed his admiration and affection — a 
country associated not only by bonds of 
religion and commerce with that great land 
beneath the first risings of the stars, but also 
with his beloved Hellas ; a country whose 
capital, Alexandria, was then the home of 
learning and philosophy, the university city 
of the great realm, the centre of the highest 
culture in the Roman and Greek worlds, and 
whose far inner reaches and deserts were 
homes of the purest monastic and ascetic 
excellences. This splendid country was at 
least free to him, and on arriving there he 
was received with the greatest honour. The 
people loved him, it is said, before they saw 
him, looking upon him as more than human, 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 99 

and making way for him in their streets as 
for one that carries sacred things. 

Here as elsewhere he lost no opportunity 
in endeavouring to abolish blood sacrifices — 
geese and bulls being the principal offerings 
in Egypt — but, as often is the way with 
well-intentioned reformers, he came into 
conflict with the authorities. The High- 
priest of Serapis, the Patriarch of Alexan- 
dria, marvelled at his temerity in refusing 
to sacrifice life, and exclaimed, " Who is 
wise enough to reform the established wor- 
ship of the Egyptians ? " 

Here also the abuse of the sport of 
horse - racing, with its incidental blood- 
spilling, brought down the displeasure of 
the Philosopher. cc Troy," he reminded 
them somewhat sternly, " fell through one 
horse." 

While carrying on his proposed work 
among the priests and temples, the future 
Emperor Vespasian landed at Alexandria. 
" Where is the Tyanean ? " was his first in- 
quiry of the sacred priests, civil magistrates, 



ioo APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

and deputies who formed the vast and pom- 
pous procession arranged to greet his arrival. 
"You will find him in the temple/' 
answered Damis the faithful disciple. 
"Then let us repair thither," replied the 
Prince, "that I may first offer prayers to 
the Gods and then converse with this ex- 
cellent man." On arriving he exclaimed, 
" Make me Emperor." " It is already 
done," answered the discreet Apollonius, 
"for I have so asked it of the Gods, and 
they have bestowed upon us a most wise, 
generous, and beneficent Prince." 

But in the far-off tracts of Upper Egypt 
were the great ascetics of the West and 
South : those who had renounced the world, 
and had retired into mountains and deserts, 
where they fasted and meditated in silence 
and solitude — the naked ones, Gymno- 
sophists, as they were called, in common 
with all who had, so to say, taken the vow 
of poverty ; for even Apollonius con- 
sidered himself as a Gymnosophist. "At 
the age of fourteen," he said, " I resigned 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT ioi 

my patrimony to those that desired such 
things, and naked I sought the naked. " 

With a small company of ten souls, he 
set out for Ethiopia and the Upper Nile, at 
first by camel and afterwards by barge. As 
slowly his dahabeah ascended the River of 
Egypt, moving like a sacred galley convey- 
ing pilgrims to a shrine, the occasional 
traveller or merchant would stay his camel's 
course and gaze at the sight, perceiving that 
the boat was full of sages, "conjecturing it 
so by the singularity of their garb, and by 
the books that they held in their hands. " 

After many days' journey they came near 
the places where the naked ones, yvfxvoi, 
lived. Here, through desert waste and 
mountainous tract, in countless caves and 
cells, in solitary shrines and holes, thou- 
sands of souls, eager and passionate for The 
Blessed Fields, lived alone in the awful silence 
of endless outstretching sands and rocks, 
moved to the hatred of the world and the 
love of solitude by the same spiritual im- 
pulse and the same strange longings for 



102 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

the Divine Life which have stirred the great 
religious movements of China, India, and 
Western Asia, and which have initiated and 
fertilised the richer mysticism of Christian 
thought and worship. 

In the brooding and almost eternal 
silence, which, in some sense, seems part of 
the very atmosphere of the Strong God, 
those ancient Egyptians must have antici- 
pated, in some degree, the rapturous 
moments vouchsafed to their more blessed 
successors, some centuries later, at Oxyr- 
rhynchus, Tabenna, Antinoe*, and in the 
Nitrian desert. Through day and night, 
through heat and cold, we know how these 
later coenobites would stand, all tense in 
prayer, waiting patiently the exquisite hour. 
Would thoughts of desertion or despair or 
a sense of weariness or accidie arise, the 
love and expectation of the Consolatory 
Presence would still surmount all. Over 
the arid soul the gentle dew would surely 
sometime fall, if only they were faithful ! 
After the Night of Watching the gentle and 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 103 

lovely Dawn would surely come ; and then 
the White Hands of God would extend and 
bless ; His Breath would come like sweet 
odours, and His Words like rich oil. His 
Mien would be gracious ; His Smile would 
be life itself ; and in His Great Eyes would 
be all their prayers — the prayers they had 
forgotten ; the prayers they had thought 
unheard. Thus these blessed saints, even 
those quite outworn in body, would commit 
themselves to " the Wise Physician Who 
holds in His Hands the pulses of our weak- 
ness," and in Him find a more than 
abundant compensation for all the pleasures 
of Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. But great 
as the renunciation of our holy Fathers was, 
it seems just to say that the renunciation of 
these countless Gymnosophists was even 
greater ; for they, in their venture of faith, 
surrendered love and wealth and all that 
makes life desirable, for benefits less posi- 
tive and blessings less manifest. 

In this Place of Meditation no trees 
could be seen, save some groups of tall 



104 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

palms which served as a meeting-place for 
the numberless recluses, whose cells dotted 
the hills and wide plains for miles around. 

It was natural that these silent anchorites 
would look askance at any stranger arriving 
in their midst of whom they knew nothing. 
And for some time they refrained from 
communicating in any way with Apollonius 
or his company of disciples. But when 
many days had passed, and, morning and 
evening, they had observed him paying his 
adorations to the Sun, as was his custom, 
and saw that he also was filled with some- 
thing of their own spirit, Thesperion, the 
chief of the community, sent a messenger 
to the blessed man with an invitation to 
discourse with him. 

At their first meeting, Thesperion, still 
doubtless not free from suspicion, spoke 
first, and apparently in a manner which con- 
tributed no large measure of honour to his 
guest. The faithful disciple Damis was 
greatly overcome and much cast down at 
the Superior's speech ; but he recovered, it 



HE VISITS ROME AND EGYPT 105 

is recorded, new life as Apollonius replied, 
and he felt quite restored when he heard 
all that his master said. 

At a subsequent discussion Apollonius 
expressed his disapproval of the Egyptian 
practice of representing their Gods as hawks, 
owls, wolves, dogs, and the like. " Beasts," 
he stated, " may derive dignity from such 
representations, but the Gods lose theirs " ; 
and he also expressed the noble thought and 
sentence that " the man who desires to 
form in his mind the image of Zeus should 
behold him with the same enraptured fancy 
as Phidias did — throned on the Heavens 
and compassed by the Hours and the Stars." 
After the Tyanean's powerful speech we read 
that " Thesperion was like unto one who 
wished to change the conversation." Whether 
it was due to these little suspicions and con- 
troversies or not, it is difficult to say, but 
Apollonius concludes that the Sages of India 
were superior to the Gymnosophists of 
Egypt both in moral and spiritual excellence. 

As he was so far up the River Nile, 



106 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Apollonius conceived the desire of endeav- 
ouring to track it to its source ; and he 
visited the Cataracts, which, he states, burst 
with such intense violence over the great 
rocks which formed the falls that his little 
party could not contemplate the sight with- 
out great pain to their hearing : their heads 
grew dizzy with the deafening thunder of the 
waters, until, stunned, they seemed as though 
they were delirious and heard the drums of 
all the desert sounding in their ears. 

Failing in the attempt to find the risings 
of the great river, the explorers returned to 
Alexandria in time to learn of the capture 
and utter destruction of Jerusalem by Titus 
in 70 a.d., and Apollonius marked the 
event by a letter of congratulation to the 
Roman general complimenting him upon his 
moderation ! 



VIII 

HIS FURTHER TRAVELS AND RETURN 
TO ROME FOR TRIAL 

T?OR some score of years after this event 
Apollonius travelled and taught in Phoe- 
nicia, Ionia, and Greece, but his biographer 
leaves something of a lacuna in this part of 
the Life ; but it would seem that he had 
considerable intercourse with Titus and also 
with Vespasian and Nerva prior to their 
elevation to the purple. His friendship with 
the last-named and his unceasing zeal for 
reform gave opportunity to those who dis- 
liked his proposed changes to injure him in 
the eyes of the Emperor Domitian. So 
numerous and so insistent did accusations and 
informations lie against him, that at length, 
to clear himself, he determined to go to 
Rome and meet his accusers face to face. 

107 



108 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

The charges against this restless spirit 
were of different kinds and not few in 
number. They included his style of dress 
and mode of living ; his knowledge of 
futurity and the adoration offered to him ; 
the homage which he paid to Nerva ; for 
statements which were believed to have been 
uttered against the Emperor Domitian, and 
for conspiring to obtain the Empire. The 
real charge lay in the homage which it was 
alleged he paid to Nerva as a candidate for 
the purple. 

Meanwhile he was arrested, cast into a 
common gaol, and kept under strict guard. 
Yet he maintained that dignity and fortitude 
which was essentially his own, and at times 
he harangued his fellow-prisoners with words 
of encouragement, and found no little com- 
fort both for himself and for them in such 
thoughts as these : " Whilst we live we are 
all prisoners, for the soul is bound to the 
body and suffers much. The men who first 
built houses built for themselves but a 
second prison. Cities also are but common 



HIS RETURN TO ROME FOR TRIAL 109 

prisons ; and the Earth itself is bound by 
the Ocean as by a chain." Then apostro- 
phising the poets he exclaimed, " Draw 
nigh, ye poets, and sing to these afflicted 
creatures, recounting how even Saturn of 
old was fettered by Vulcan in Heaven itself " ; 
and with such -like words he evoked the 
stoical spirit in the most degraded natures. 
After some time he was led forth to an 
audience of the Emperor. Four guards 
attended him, but they preserved a greater 
distance from his person than was their 
custom when guarding common prisoners. 
The Augustus, crowned with a garland of 
green boughs, received him in the Hall of 
Adonis, which was at the time decorated in 
honour of the feast of Adonis with shells 
and flowers similar to what were borne by 
the Assyrians in their sacred festivals. After 
discussing the charges privately with him, 
Domitian, more suspicious than ever, com- 
manded that he should be shorn and placed 
in a more loathsome prison than the former 
one, loaded with heavy chains, and set 



no APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

amongst the vilest felons. The unhappy 
Damis now lost all heart and weeping 
exclaimed bitterly, " O Master, what will 
become of us ? Who will defend you 
now ? " " Time," answered the dauntless 
Tyanean, "and the spirit of the Gods and 
the love of Philosophy." This bold hope 
proved true ; and at the trial which followed, 
Apollonius, lifting up his eyes to Zeus, 
spoke so ably that " a shout of applause arose 
louder than what was suitable to the dignity 
and gravity of an Imperial tribunal," and 
he was acquitted by the Emperor himself. 

Some time after thus in a real sense 
" winning his freedom " the philosopher re- 
turned to Greece, and was received every- 
where with enthusiasm and respect ; and 
this — the final period of his long life — may 
be termed the period of his triumph. 
Olympia itself was stirred at his presence, 
and the people flocked to see him with more 
eagerness than to witness the Olympic 
Games. Crowds of disciples attached them- 
selves to his person, and the flower of the 



HIS RETURN TO ROME FOR TRIAL in 

land followed him, content to learn of his 
wisdom. The name Apollonian was given 
to these followers ; and near the Springs 
of Hercyne, in the cave of Trophonius in 
Boeotia, he wrote down for their use the 
precepts of his great predecessor Pytha- 
goras ; and the book was afterwards pre- 
served by the Emperor Hadrian in his 
palace at Antium. For two years he teaches 
Greece, and then visits Ionia, Smyrna, and 
Ephesus for the last time. At Ephesus he 
was moved by that strange telepathic sym- 
pathy which influenced him at times so 
curiously, and he announced to the astonish- 
ment of the Ephesians the assassination of 
Domitian at the very time of the tragedy. 

The new Emperor, Nerva, sent for the 
aged philosopher, now heavy with his hun- 
dred years, and invited him to come to 
Rome and act as his counsellor ; but a 
summons more august than that of the great 
Caesar of the Roman Empire came to him. 
It was the summons of Death — the call to 
"the supreme Initiation into the Great Mys- 



112 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

teries," as Plutarch calls it in his fragment 
On the Soul ; and in his own characteristic 
way he met the dread command. Sending 
away his faithful Damis on a mission, real 
or fictitious, to the new Emperor, Nerva, he 
died alone and followed out his own maxim 
— for his tomb, it is said, could nowhere be 
found — " Conceal your life, and if you 
cannot do that conceal your death." 



IX 

CONCLUSION 

THEWING the philosophy or " religion " 
of this wonderful man, we see that it 
was of a piece with all speculative systems 
of thought. The mystery of Death was the 
basis of it ; and the mystery of Death is the 
background of all philosophy. The philo- 
sopher deludes himself when he says he is 
explaining Life. He is not. He is really 
endeavouring to understand Death. He is 
trying to interpret the dark shadow that 
surely falls at even, or the chilly wind that 
suddenly unsummers June, or the hidden 
hand that silently extinguishes a star ; that 
terrible finger which, without distinction, 
infects all things, beautiful or base, with its 
leprous touch — for the evil thing must also 
die. It is this eternal disintegrating force, 
h 113 



114 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

this perpetual separating power, interpene- 
trating all life, inhabiting all thought and 
form, which has unbalanced heathen philo- 
sophy and left out the part that Love should 
support. 

And the philosophy of Apollonius stood 
as no exception to the rule. His was not a 
philosophy for women. It was never meant 
for that. It was only a philosophy for 
men. It compassed none of those more 
tender notes, those sad wordless songs or 
untold compassions which, like inexpressible 
pities, find refuge only in a woman's heart. 
And he himself deliberately refrained from 
entering that Sanctuary : yea, into her dark- 
ness or her silence he did not even stoop. 
He could sow no seeds of love in her soul. 
He could present to her no Mater Miseri- 
cordite, no Lady of Sorrows, no Sister of 
surpassing tenderness to whom her sad and 
trembling voice could rise, as from some 
sacred grove, and tell of her grief for 
children or her loss of love. And so al- 
though he was gifted with the strange 



CONCLUSION 115 

faculty of discerning men's minds, he yet 
lacked that more attractive sympathy, that 
singular gift of unlocking the troubled 
hearts of women, which was so evident in 
the being of St. Philip Neri or in that of 
the Blessed John Vianney, whose peculiar 
tendernesses drew all France to his confes- 
sional for the exceeding sweetness of his 
soul. 

Thus he never really fathomed, in all its 
mysterious depths and endless recesses, the 
great well-spring of human affection. He 
valued not that which, with us, is longed for 
by so many and realised by so few. Only 
the great contending male, solitary in his 
aspirations, intense and awful in his quest 
for God, was by him accounted worthy to 
tell to Heaven the weightier sorrows of his 
heart. Nature and the Gods were nearer to 
him than woman ; for they knew the secret 
which she did not know and which he alone 
longed to know. He had need of them. 
They partook of something over and beyond 
Death, something which he desired above all 



n6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

things — Life. Whereas she was but of to- 
day and for to-day. Thus, like all Greeks, 
he refused to value Love, and laid no serious 
worth upon what men now prize as the 
greatest of all virtues. He valued Life and 
Life only. 

Yet perhaps there is a deeper reason, a 
more elemental cause, why Love finds no 
part in Greek philosophy ; and which we 
ourselves may find in the Hour of Darkness 
and in the Night of Fear. For in the 
instance of a great bereavement we might 
well conceive of one thinking, in the mid- 
night of his sorrow, as he would recall 
the delectable perfections of some departed 
friend, that there is nothing beautiful enough 
to live. And truly thinking thus, from 
that hour he could not help but cease to 
love, repeating again and again, " Surely 
there is nothing beautiful enough to live, 
since the great Lord of Life and Love has 
slain my exceedingly beloved friend, as 
though He deemed him unworthy of the 
gift of life " ; and thus reasoning, he would 



CONCLUSION 117 

continue, " Who henceforth can be dear to 
me, for it is vain to vesture a mortal creature 
with immortal love ? The most noble graces 
and the most perfect gifts can please me no 
more, for now I know that the fairest women 
and the most honourable men must also 
some day die." Thus might one in old times 
have spoken to himself in the haughtiness of 
his soul, and would have refused to offer 
another triumph to the triumphs of Death 
by refusing to love. But after all — in the 
Philosophic Absolute — who can climb the 
heights of the magnificent Mountain Truth 
which lifts its glorious head beyond the 
outmost stars and pillars God Himself? 
No man, nor any tribe, nor even the human 
Race, nor yet the whole Creation of In- 
telligences higher than Man. Yet if we 
take away Love from Life we take away the 
Wings that would lift us when we cannot 
climb. 

Viewing the fall of Apollonius's life we 
find it does not differ from its height in re- 
spect of spiritual Love. The Peace of Vast 



n8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

Plains and the Silence of Solitary Mountains 
were ever in his heart, but he never heard 
the singing of the Seraphim — the Seraphim 
who, most aflame with Love, are nearest 
God. He was never lifted up, during all 
his life, into the burning plane of Adoration 
and Love which Christians only know. And 
in the extreme hour he turned from the 
affections and comfort of his fellow-man. He 
looked for Peace and not for Love. Peace is 
indeed a blessed thing, longed for and prayed 
for so earnestly and so ceaselessly by weary 
humanity ; and it has been so much prized, 
through all the Christian ages, that a special 
significance has been ascribed to it in the 
Eastern Church, and a special Litany, called 
the Litany of Peace, reserved for use by 
Her in all Her sacred Offices. And we 
may say, perhaps not unwisely, that Death 
came to Apollonius, in the words of such 
another of Her Litanies, as " an Angel of 
Peace, a faithful Guide, a Guardian of his 
soul and body." 

And yet again we find that beyond the 



CONCLUSION 119 

Grave he seeks Peace. He leaves none 
behind him. And this is quite sufficient 
in our opinion to justify, if on no other 
grounds, the entire dismissal of the foolish 
invention of controversialists that the life 
and death of Apollonius was drawn up by 
his biographer as a counterwork to the life 
and death of the Son of God. For at the 
supreme epoch of " inevitable change " his 
peace of mind was not made sorrowful with 
the sense of a great betrayal. He has no 
fears of an inevitable passion. He arranges 
no sad Ccena, utters no final farewell, pro- 
phetic with the anguish of his death. He 
bequeaths no cheering promise of a per- 
petual Presence, no gift of Peace, to his 
friends. He grants no succouring or up- 
lifting prerogatives. He gives no Donatio 
mortis causa, so to say, to his disciples ; but 
to the dulcet and inviting voices of virgins 
issuing, as his followers would believe, from 
the Singing Gates of Heaven, he departs 
triumphantly and as one called to the throne 
of the Gods. Thither he ascends, as a 



120 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 

God to the Gods. His is no death, for he 
does not die. It is a sacred transformation, 
an assumption, an apotheosis. To the mind 
of the ancient it is magnificent, but to us it 
lacks the sweet, sad note of humanity ; for 
it lacks that one inevitable, one tremendous 
crisis of our being, that one awful and con- 
summate moment, when the stricken soul, 
so long pursued, is at length overtaken by 
the transcendent Love of God. 



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